Out of the 13 districts of K-P, five districts of Hazara division have been selected for the head counting exercise in the first phase, which kicks off from Wednesday. These districts include Haripur, Abbottabad, Mansehra, Battagram and Torghar.

The first phase of the census would last till April 14.

However, the three districts of Kohistan would be completed during next phase of the census. Officials said that this was because notification of the newly created third district of Palal Kolai has yet to be issued by the provincial government.

so i asked my firend what is this census thing , he said they will collect names of unmarried 19 yrs old boys and girls and fix their marriage in 6 months....and they will recieve governmental assistance in home running for 3 years..is it true ? @Zibago

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hahahahahaha this the funniest claim. But i can vouch for one thing that they do ask if there is an unmarried boy or girl irrespective of age the specific age you have mentioned.

Pakistani Army soldiers escort Census officials as country launched first housing and population census in 19 years. Pakistani launched its first census in nearly two decades, with security high as thousands of enumerators backed by the military. Fast-growing Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world, with an estimated 200 million people, but has not held a census since 1998 due to years of bickering between politicians.

Islamabad: Members and leaders of the Sikh community in Peshawar expressed their disappointment at being “left out” of the national census, saying they feared their community would not be adequately represented in Pakistan’s first national headcount in 19 years.

“The concerned department has not included the Sikh minority in the ongoing count. It is not only unfortunate for us, it is also a point of great concern for the community to have been missed out in the counting exercise,” Radesh Sing Tony, chairman of a Sikh committee, told the Dawn on Saturday.

He complained that a sizeable number of Sikhs was living in Pakistan, but the community was not counted among the religions included in the census form.

He noted that Sikhs would be counted under the “other” religion category in the form, which would not provide an accurate picture of the Sikh population.

“This is an injustice, we are being deprived of our rights,” he said.

The 500-year-old religion was founded in what was now part of Pakistan. Most Sikhs left Pakistan for India after both countries gained independence from Britain in 1947.

Around 20,000 Sikhs remain in Pakistan today, most in the restive northwest regions, which have been rocked by an Islamist insurgency for more than a decade, forcing many to leave their homes in the tribal areas on the Afghan border for the city of Peshawar.

Tony said he had written to the Chief Justice of Pakistan and the Chief Justices of the Peshawar and Sindh High Courts requesting that the community be counted as an official religion.

When contacted, a spokesperson for the census exercise, Habibullah Khan, admitted that it was a mistake on the part of the census authorities.

“Yes, a sizeable population of Sikhs are living in Pakistan, but have we missed them in the census,” he told Dawn.

He said the census forms had been printed in 2007 and only five religions had been included on the recommendation of a 120-member technical committee.

He conceded that the Sikh population may have been marginal in 2007, but their population had increased with the passage of time.

By Qaseem SaeedIt took several knocks before the door opened and a young boy emerged. While at first groggy, he quickly snapped into attentiveness on noticing an army officer standing at the doorway, cradling a G3 rifle.

It isn’t unusual at Bara Market, in central Karachi, for uniformed men to show up outside people’s homes looking for criminals. The area has seen its fair share of police raids after the paramilitary operation began in the city. The boy let out a sigh of relief when a woman, in a green jacket, edged her way forward to announce, “We are here for the population census.”

Karachi is often referred to as the largest city in Pakistan. By unofficial estimates, it is a city of 20 million. But that is only an estimate. No one knows for sure how big it is, since the last census was conducted 19 years ago.

“This is a very unique experience for our children,” says an old woman, holding her granddaughter’s hand, “I remember the national census, but now so will my grandchildren.”

For the headcount, Karachi has been divided into 14,552 blocks, or geographical units. Each census block will comprise of 175 to 250 houses. More than 11,000 civilians have been hired to move door to door, from 8 am to 4 pm, shadowed by 30,000 army officers.

Pakistan was stalling on holding the decennial census, until last year the Supreme Court directed it to announce a schedule. There wasn’t much time to train the staff or to get the paper work done, yet, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, tasked to carry out the headcount, insists it is prepared and equipped for the monumental undertaking.

Others aren’t too sure. Concerns are surfacing about the way the data is being recorded.

“The staff are using pencils to fill out forms,” explains a resident, who made a video recording of enumerators using lead pencils rather than pens, “This makes the data vulnerable to tampering later.”

Outraged, leaders of the Karachi-based Muttahida Qaumi Movement have already written letters of complaints to the PBS office in Islamabad. In response, the Bureau has issued new instructions prohibiting field officers from using pencils.

Then there are complaints from the city’s transgender people. A large community lives in the Moosa Colony of Karachi. Most of them have identity cards that list them as male.

“As per my CNIC card, I am Faisal, but in my community I am known as Farzana,” a member of the transgender community tells Geo. TV. “I can’t have the gender on my ID card changed overnight. So, for now, I will be forced to register myself as male in the census form.”

There are many others like Farzana who will not be able to identify themselves as a third gender.

Islamabad will use the census data to apportion seats in the parliament, allocate funds to provinces and districts, and to redraw lines of legislative districts. The residents of Karachi are concerned that the technical hiccups could put the crucial data at risk of inaccuracies.

Underestimating Lahore?
By Ummay-e-Farwah
Lahore may have grown larger than expected.

One indication of this came as Pakistan began its sixth population census. Over the weekend, city officials scrambled to hire additional enumerators, bringing the total to 6,000, up from 4,857.

More hands were needed after each geographical unit, a census block in the city, comprised of over 900 houses—much higher than anticipated. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), has identified a total of 6,746 blocks and 867 circles in Lahore.

The last time Pakistan conducted a census, in 1998, Lahore recorded a population of upward to 6 million.

While new enumerators have been hired, the PBS will not be requesting the deployment of additional military personnel. This could mean that some civilian officers will go out into the field unaccompanied. Furthermore, the budget for the city would also have to be revised as each enumerator takes home a salary of Rs.39, 000 for the month-long task.

Pakistan’s long-awaited census may be the largest mobilisation of a civilian workforce. Islamabad has deployed a team of 119,000 people, including enumerators, with an additional 200,000 army personnel.

In the first phase, enumerators have been moving door to door, chalking each house with a number and recording basic data such as the identity card number of the head of each household. Additional details will be collected in the second phase of the undertaking.

Those recording the information have been instructed to scribble on the back of each printed form; code 3 for transgender people, 4 and 5 for the disabled, and 6 for disabled transgender persons.

Once collected, the data will be handed over to the army personnel shadowing each civilian staff for safekeeping. The final tally will then be forwarded to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics in Islamabad for an electronic record.

Counting refugees in Peshawar
By Aftab Ahmad
When it comes to the population census, Peshawar is unique.

Unlike other cities, it has a large refugee population, most of whom are from neighbouring Afghanistan. It also hosts the internal displaced persons (IDPs) who fled Pakistan’s tribal areas to settle, temporarily, in the city.

There are no separate boxes for refugees or the IDPs in the printed forms. And that is a big problem.

“The forms were printed in 2008,” admits Akhtar Ali Khan, the Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Statistics, “therefore they do not include boxes for these people.”

Yet, Khan insists that the refugees, both registered and unregistered, are being counted separately and will be included in the final headcount.

There are an estimated 1.23 million registered and 600,000 unregistered Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Officials of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics told Geo.TV that they are also acquiring data related to the Afghan refugees from the UNHCR.

According to a field officer working in the Gulbahar area of Peshawar, the Afghans have been cooperative during the exercise and are providing all the required data.

Peshawar, like the rest of Pakistan, is also recovering from a wave of terrorist attacks. Here, four security personnel in the urban areas and five in the rural are accompanying each enumerator.

A total of 1,450 civilian field officers have been deployed to collect data from the demarcated 2,334 blocks and 237 circles in the city.

As the census exercise enters its fifth day, other complaints from the city are coming from residents, who say enumerators are missing their homes.

PESHAWAR: Only registered temporarily-displaced persons (TDP) will be included in the official count of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas while the remaining will be counted as part of the areas they have been currently residing.

The decision was taken at a high-level meeting held in Islamabad earlier this week which was attended by officials of the finance ministry, Ministry of States and Frontier Regions (Safron), Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, FATA Secretariat and representatives of Orakzai, North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas.

An official of the Ministry of Safron told The Express Tribune that three categories of TDPs came under discussion during the course of the meeting: those who are registered but came back to the settled areas after they returned to their native villages and found their house demolished, the second category is of those who are unregistered TDPs while the third category includes those who crossed the border and went to Afghanistan.

An official of the Fata Secretariat told The Express Tribune that there are more than 100,000 families as unregistered TDPs.

The sources quoted an official of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics as telling them that no proper mechanism could be formulated regarding unregistered TDPs at the moment as the census has already been kicked off, while officials dealing with the census said they should have been informed earlier.

While the Fata Secretariat said they were not consulted on the issue, added the source.

“It was then decided that those unregistered TDPs, who have been living in settled areas, should be registered in the areas where they are [living at present],” the sources said, adding “The decision was taken to avoid any possible issues emerging in the ongoing census if they are left uncounted.”

As per the census law, people who refuse to cooperate with census teams are liable to be punished for up to six months in jail and fined as well.

Regarding the registered TDPs, the Fata Secretariat official said: “The secretariat will provide details of registered TDPs to the census department in the 10-day gap between the first and second phase in the census during which the data will be processed.

For the third category, those who are currently displaced and are in Afghanistan, they will be left out of the count. An official of the Ministry of Safron said that the TDPs across the border contacted them and asked for the repatriation, although the process once began could not be halted.

The population and household count in the first block of the phase one under the 6th population and housing census in sixty-three districts across the country will conclude on Monday.

The First Block of the First Phase includes sixteen districts in Punjab, eight in Sindh, fourteen in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, fifteen in Balochistan and five each in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.

First phase of census completed countrywideKARACHI: The first phase of census has been completed on Wednesday.

According to reports; homeless people were also counted in by the authorities in the early hours of the day. Drug addicts present outside hospitals, roadside and other such areas were approached by the staffers along with the army personnel.

The second phase of census will commence from March 31.

The first phase of census kicked off from March 15. Over 450,000 government employees have been trained to take part in the sixth census of the country which will begin on March 15.

According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, teams that will carry out census duties will include a civil servant and military personnel. Security will be ensured jointly by civil and intelligence forces.

During the census, schools will remain open and exams will continue as scheduled.

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa cabinet on Wednesday asked the federal government to devise a mechanism to include the people of the province living in the Middle East in the ongoing population census.

Public health engineering minister Shah Farman told reporters after a meeting of the provincial cabinet that over seven million people had gone to the Middle East from KP but the Federal Bureau of Statistics didn’t devise a mechanism for counting them during the population census.

He said senior minister Inayatullah Khan had raised the issue in the cabinet’s meeting and therefore, it was decided that the provincial government would take up the matter with the federal government.

The minister said the cabinet had expressed serious reservations about the matter and demanded the inclusion of the particulars of oversees Pakistanis in the data of their respective districts or provinces.

Minister regrets there’s no mechanism to count over 7m people from province living in ME
“This is unacceptable for us. The FBS should work out a proper mechanism in this regard,” he said.

Chief Minister Pervez Khattak chaired the cabinet’s meeting.

The countrywide population census, which had begun on March 15, will be completed in two phases. Thirteen KP districts and Fata’s Orakzai Agency have been included in the first phase.

The KP government has already opposed the shifting of census data from the province to Islamabad for counting.

Similarly, the parliamentarians of Fata have also expressed dissatisfaction with the census and demanded the inclusion of a separate column in the census form for the people of Fata, who had migrated from their areas to the country’s settled areas.